Many wireless communications employ a medium sharing method based on carrier sensing with multiple access and collision avoidance (CSMA/CA). For example, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.11 standard defines a CSMA/CA technique that employs exponential back-off in the event of a transmission failure. In addition, the 802.11 standard provides for large packet fragmentation as well as packet aggregation, and for transmitter data rate adjustment. The techniques employed by the 802.11 standard work well for wireless networks with client devices served by an access point (AP) because all of the devices (the client devices and AP) have approximately the same view of the channel state.
As the range of applications expands and the environment in which a wireless network is used becomes more diverse, the assumption that the channel state is consistent for all wireless devices is no longer valid. In order to prevent persistent collisions and congestions due to overly loaded networks, typical medium access methods reduce successive media access attempts (after a transmission failure) by means of an exponential back-off rule. But when packet failures occur due to interferences from hidden or non-CSMA/CA devices, or due to poor signal reception, exponential back-off may result in an extra penalty for having suffered a packet failure, without realizing the intended benefits of backing-off.